A     GARLAND    SERIES 

THE    ENGLISH 
WORKING   CLASS 


A  Collection  of 

Thirty  Important  Titles 

That  Document  and  Analyze 

Working- Class  Life  before 

the  First  World  War 


Edited  by 

STANDISH  MEACHAM 

University     of    Texas 


Lectures  on  Housing 


B.  Seebohm  Rowntree 
A.  C.  Pigou 


Garland  Publishing,  Inc. 

New  York  &  London 

1980 


For  a  complete  list  of  the  titles  in  this  series, 
see  the  final  pages  of  this  volume. 

The  volumes  in  this  series  are  printed  on  acid-free, 
-    250-year-life  paper. 

This  facsimile  has  been  made  from  a  copy  in 
the  Library  of  Congress. 


Library  of  Congress  Cataloging  in  Publication  Data 

Rowntree,  Benjamin  Seebohm,  1871-  1954. 
Lectures  on  housing. 

(The  English  working  class) 

Reprint  of  the  1914  ed.  published  at  the  University 

Press,  Manchester,  which  was  issued  as  the  Warburton 

lectures  for  1914  and  also  as  no.  18  of  the  Manchester 

University  lectures. 

Includes  index. 

1.  Housing  — Great  Britain— Addresses,  essays, 

lectures.     L   Pigou,  Arthur  Cecil,  1877-  1959,  joint 

author.     II.   Title.     III.   Series:  English  working 

class.     IV.   Series:  Warburton  lectures  ;  1914. 

V.   Series:  Manchester  University  lectures  ;  no.  18. 

HD7333.A3R7     1980         363.5'0941         79-56971 

ISBN  0-8240-0122-2 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


MANCHESTER  UNIVERSITY  LECTURES 
No.  XVIII. 

7333 


Lectures  on  Housing 


Sherratt  ii  HuoRSS 

Publishers  to  the  University  of  Manchester 

Manchester :  34  Cross  Street 

London :  33  Soho  Square,  W. 

Agents  for  the  United  States 

Longmans,  Green  &  Co. 

443-449  Fourth  Avenue,  New  York 


LECTURES 


ON 


HOUSING 


THE  WARBURTON  LECTURES  FOR  1914 


BY 

B.    SEEBOHM    ROWNTREE 

AND 

A.  C.    PIGOU. 


MANCHESTER 

AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS. 

1914 


ALL  BIGHTS  BUBRTSD 


NOTE. 

These  lectures  were  delivered  under  the  provisions  of 
the  Warburton  Trust  which  is  constituted  under  the  Will 
of  the  late  Mr.  Alderman  Warburton,  of  Manchester, 
who  died  in  the  year  1887. 

The  following  lectures  were  delivered  at  Manchester 
University,  that  by  Mr.  Rowntree  on  November  27th, 
191 3,  and  that  by  Professor  Pigou  on  19th  January, 
1914. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Note    --- V. 

How  far  it  is  possible  to  provide  Satisfactory  Houses 
for  the  Working  Classes  at  rents  which  they 
can  afford  to  pay.     By  B.  Seebohm  Rowntree  -       3 

Some  Aspects  of  the  Housing  Problem.     By  A.  C. 

Pigou. 35 

Index ^7 


HOW  FAR  IT  IS  POSSIBLE  TO  PRO- 
VIDE SATISFACTORY  HOUSES 
FOR  THE  WORKING  CLASSES, 
AT  RENTS  WHICH  THEY  CAN 
AFFORD  TO  PAY. 


How  Far  it  is  Possible  to  Provide 
Satisfactory  Houses  for  the  Working 
Classes,  at  Rents  which  they  can 
afford  to  pay. 

By  B.  Seebohm  Rowntree. 

Let  us,  first,  review  very  briefly  the  present 
conditions  under  which  the  working  people 
of  this  country  are  housed.  We  may  separate 
their  houses  into  three  divisions  which,  though 
it  is  impossible  to  draw  a  rigid  line  of  demar- 
cation between  them,  will  be  found  helpful 
for  purposes  of  classification.  In  the  lowest 
division  are  houses  which,  though  they  may 
be  found  in  isolation,  or  in  small  groups,  are 
generally  congested  in  slums — houses  defi- 
cient in  some  or  all  of  the  following  essential 
conditions  :  light,  space,  ventilation,  warmth, 
dryness,  and  water  supply.  A  house  should 
fulfil  the  minimum  standard  of  hygienic 
requirements  in  all  these  respects,  but  these 
houses  fall  very  far  short  of  it.     Although 


4  SATISFACTORY  HOUSES  FOR  WORKING  CLASSES 

we  have  no  accurate  statistics,  such  informa- 
tion as  we  have  points  to  the  fact  that  prob- 
ably as  many  as  two  or  three  milHon  people 
live  in  houses  belonging  to  this  class. 

In  the  next  division  are  houses  which  are 
probably  occupied  by  about  65  to  80  per  cent, 
of  the  working  people  of  this  country.  These 
houses,  which  we  may  speak  of  as  Class  2, 
usually  open  directly  upon  the  street,  and 
have  a  living  room,  with  a  small  scullery 
behind,  two  or  three  bedrooms — much  more 
frequently  two  than  three — and  a  small  back- 
yard. We  do  not,  as  a  nation,  realise  that 
one-fourth  of  the  dwellings  of  this  country 
have  less  than  four  rooms ;  these  houses  have 
not  more  than  two  bedrooms,  and  of  course, 
no  bathroom.  We  do  not  realise  that  one 
person  in  ten  is  living  under  what  are  techni- 
cally known  as  "  overcrowded  conditions  " — 
that  is,  with  more  than  two  persons  to  every 
room  in  the  house.  And  these  houses  are 
crowded  thirty,  forty,  and  even  fifty  to  the 
acre.  We  know  the  long  dreary  streets  of 
them.     In  any  long  railway  journey  we  pass 


AT  RENTS  THEY  CAN  AFFORD  TO  PAY      5 

through  town  after  town,  and  see  these 
dismal  rows  without  a  vestige  of  greenery 
about  them,  only  characterised  by  their  mean- 
ness and  by  their  deadly  monotony.  When 
such  homes  are  overcrowded,  and  only  have 
two  bedrooms,  it  is  impossible,  or  next  to 
impossible,  to  live  decently,  especially  when 
the  family  is  grown  up.  Of  course,  too,  this 
crowding  together  of  people  per  acre  and  per 
room,  has  the  most  prejudicial  effect  upon  the 
health  of  the  community.  Disease  not  only 
spreads  with  extraordinary  rapidity,  but  is 
generated  under  such  conditions — a  fact 
especially  noticeable  in  the  case  of  tubercu- 
losis. A  house  that  is  lacking  in  light  and 
ventilation,  as  houses  are  bound  to  be  in 
these  narrow  streets,  provides  just  the  condi- 
tions which  are  most  favourable  to  the 
development  of  this  terrible  malady ;  and  yet 
many  millions  of  the  working  people  are 
living  in  such  houses. 

Next  there  is  the  highest  division  of  work- 
ing class  houses — Class  3 — built  perhaps 
twenty  or  twenty-five,  and  sometimes  even 


6   SATISFACTORY  HOUSES  FOR  WORKING  CLASSES 

fewer,  to  the  acre,  with  a  parlour,  a  little  hall 
or  passage,  a  living  room,  a  scullery  behind 
that,  and  three  bedrooms,  with  occasionally 
a  bathroom.  Probably  from  ten  to  twenty 
per  cent,  of  our  workers  are  living  in  these 
houses.  They  are  sanitary,  and  as  a  rule, 
fairly  well  planned — sometimes  extremely 
well  planned — so  far  as  their  interior 
arrangements  are  concerned;  but  generally 
speaking,  they  also  are  built  in  long  rows. 
They  often  have  a  little  front  garden,  a  bow 
window,  and  a  large  backyard  or  a  small 
garden  behind. 

Such  are  housing  conditions  among  our 
workers  to-day.  Although  they  leave  so 
much  to  be  desired,  the  working  classes  pay 
a  huge  proportion  of  their  income  in  rent. 

It  is  about  fourteen  years  since  I  investi- 
gated the  facts  in  York,  but  I  very  much 
doubt  whether  they  would  be  materially 
different  to-day. 

Taking  the  families  whose  total  income — 
not  merely  the  income  of  the  chief  wage- 
earner — was  between  20s.  and  30s.,  I  found 


AT  RENTS  THEY  CAN  AFFORD  TO  PAY  / 

that  1 6  to  17  per  cent.,  or  about  one-sixth,  of 
it  was  absorbed  in  rent.  From  an  investiga- 
tion in  Middlesbrough,  made  a  few  weeks 
ago,  similar  figures  emerged,  i.e.,  families 
whose  total  income  varied  from  20s.  to  30s. 
were  spending  from  16  to  17  per  cent,  of  it 
in  rent.  In  towns  where  rents  are  high  the 
proportion  is  higher.  A  short  time  ago  I 
investigated  a  number  of  houses  in  London, 
and  there  it  rose  to  20  to  25  per  cent.  But 
taking  the  country  as  a  whole,  probably  the 
majority  of  the  working  classes  are  paying  at 
least  one-sixth  of  their  total  income  in  rent, 
although  the  quality  of  the  dwellings  is  often 
so  unsatisfactory. 

But  now  we  are  confronted  with  the  fact 
that  there  is  a  great  shortage  even  of  such 
houses  as  I  have  described.  Recent  investi- 
gations in  a  great  number  of  towns,  show 
pretty  clearly  that  in  about  half  the  towns  of 
England  there  are  many  working  men  who 
cannot  get  accommodation  suited  to  their 
needs.  Either  they  must  go  into  houses  that 
are  much  too  large,  and  take  lodgers  to  help 


8  SATISFACTORY  HOUSES  FOR  WORKING  CLASSES 

to  pay  the  rent,  or  they  must  crowd  into 
houses  that  are  unsatisfactory  or  much  too 
small,  not  because  they  are  unable  or  unwil- 
ling to  pay  for  better  ones,  but  because  there 
are  none  to  be  had.  This  shortage  is  par- 
ticularly acute  at  present  for  various  reasons. 
The  first  is  the  scare  which  arose  at  the  time 
of  the  Finance  Act.  All  the  political  bicker- 
ing, in  which  one  party  tried  to  paint  the 
possible  consequences  of  the  Act  in  the  most 
lurid  colours,  while  the  other  party  tried  to 
defend  it,  undoubtedly  created  a  panic  in  the 
country.  But  then,  other  conditions  have 
discouraged  the  building  of  small  houses. 
In  the  first  place,  it  has  been  difficult  to  get 
money  at  any  price.  Good  securities,  which 
were  yielding  2f  per  cent.,  lo  or  12  years 
ago,  can  be  bought  so  cheaply  now  that  they 
yield  3J  per  cent.,  and  gilt-edged  securities 
can  be  obtained  to  pay  4  per  cent.  People 
have  not  been  tempted  to  invest  in  house 
property,  which  is  always  an  anxiety,  when 
they  had  such  good  alternatives  in  absolutely 
liquid   securities.     Next,   there   has   been   a 


AT  RENTS  THEY  CAN  AFFORD  TO  PAY  9 

very  rapid  rise  in  the  cost  of  constructing  a 
house — a  rise  of  lo  or  12  per  cent,  during 
the  last  10  years.  Added  to  these  causes 
which  have  discouraged  the  building  of  new 
houses,  the  increased  activity  of  Sanitary 
Authorities,  under  the  1909  Housing  and 
Town  planning  Act,  has  resulted  in  the 
closing  of  a  large  number  of  houses.  All 
these  factors — the  panic  connected  with  the 
Finance  Act,  the  condition  of  the  money 
market,  the  rise  in  the  cost  of  construction, 
and  the  great  number  of  houses  closed  since 
1909,  have  contributed  to  the  present  shortage. 
But  though  at  the  moment  this  shortage 
is  unusually  acute,  it  is  no  new  thing.  There 
is  always  a  shortage,  and  it  is  accentuated 
in  times  of  trade  boom,  when  money  is  dear, 
and  when  builders,  instead  of  speculating, 
are  putting  up  factories  and  shops.  It  will 
be  worth  while  to  enquire  why  the  supply  of 
houses  always  tends  to  fall  short  of  the 
demand.  A  house  is  a  commodity  which  it 
takes  about  a  century  to  consume.  If  there 
is  a  shortage  of  bread,  the  bakers  bake  more 


lO  SATISFACTORY  HOUSES  FOR  WORKING  CLASSES 

loaves  at  once,  and  those  loaves  are  consumed 
during  the  period  of  exceptional  demand. 
So  if  there  is  a  shortage  of  boots,  the  boot- 
makers manufacture  more,  and  they  are  sold 
and  worn  out  while  the  high  demand  lasts; 
but  a  person  who  thinks  of  building  a  house, 
or  an  investor  who  thinks  of  buying  it,  wants 
to  be  quite  sure  that  the  demand  for  it  will 
continue,  especially  as  it  is  not  an  exception- 
ally lucrative  form  of  property,  and  offers  no 
great  inducement  to  run  heavy  risks.  And 
so  there  must  always  be  a  considerable 
shortage  before  the  builder  is  willing  to  build 
or  the  investor  to  invest. 

Again,  land  values  are  extremely  inflexible. 
At  present,  for  instance,  the  builder  often 
says  :  "  The  cost  of  construction  has  gone 
up,  and  money  is  very  dear,  and  it  does  not 
pay  me  to  build  unless  I  can  get  land  at  a 
reasonable  figure."  So  he  goes  to  the  land- 
lord with  :  "If  you  will  let  me  have  that  land 
for  a  hundred  pounds  an  acre  less,  I  would 
put  up  a  few  houses."  But  the  landlord 
replies  "  No,  why  should  I  ?  "     Nor  does  he, 


AT  RENTS  THEY  CAN  AFFORD  TO  PAY  1 1 

because  land  is  a  commodity  which  is  not 
perishable.  If  he  were  selling  fruit  and  the 
demand  were  slack,  he  would  be  bound 
immediately  to  reduce  his  price,  as  otherwise 
his  goods  would  perish  on  his  hands.  Or  if 
he  were  selling  diamonds,  to  take  another 
extreme  case,  and  had  fixed  his  price  too 
high,  he  might  completely  kill  his  market. 
No  one  is  under  any  compulsion  to  buy 
diamonds,  and  too  high  a  price  may  dis- 
courage buyers  altogether.  But  in  the  case 
of  land,  the  owner  knows  that  with  the  grow- 
ing population  the  demand  is  bound  to  grow, 
since  whatever  they  dispense  with,  people 
must  have  land.  Therefore  he  maintains  his 
price,  saying,  from  his  point  of  view,  "  If  you 
don't  pay  it  to-day,  you  will  do  so  in  the  long 
run."  But  the  builder  reflects :  "  I  cannot 
squeeze  the  price  of  material :  I  cannot 
squeeze  the  price  of  labour,  and  I  cannot 
borrow  money  at  a  lower  rate  of  interest,  so 
as  I  cannot  get  cheaper  land,  I  shall  not 
build." 

There  is  no  doubt  that  all  these  factors 


1 2   SATISFACTORY  HOUSES  FOR  WORKING  CLASSES 

check  the  supply  of  houses.  But  it  is  also 
checked  by  the  poverty  of  the  working-man. 
He  cannot  pay  a  rent  which  tempts  the 
builder;  in  other  words,  the  margin  of  profit 
that  the  builder  can  make  out  of  him  is  so 
small  that  his  demand  for  a  house  is  not 
effective.  He  wants  and  needs  it,  but  he 
cannot  pay  a  price  which  will  secure  it. 

These,  then,  are  the  permanent  causes  of 
shortage  :  that  a  house  takes  a  century  to 
consume ;  that  land  values  are,  comparatively 
speaking,  inflexible,  and  that  a  working-man 
-can  only  afford  a  cheap  house. 

Coming  now  to  the  question,  "  Can  satis- 
factory houses  be  provided  for  the  working 
classes  at  rents  which  they  can  afford  to  pay"  ? 
I  should  like  to  say  that,  in  my  opinion,  apart 
from  any  question  of  hygiene,  long  monoto- 
nous rows  of  houses  are  eminently  unsatis- 
factory, and  I  should  like  to  make  it  impos- 
sible to  continue  to  build  them.  There  is  no 
reason  why  we  should  not  limit  the  number 
of  houses  which  may  be  built  to  the  acre. 
Just  as  bye-laws  enact  that  the  rooms  in  a 


AT  RENTS  THEY  CAN  AFFORD  TO  PAY     1 3 

house  shall  not  be  less  than  a  certain  height, 
or  a  certain  superficial  area,  they  should  limit 
the  number  of  houses  to  the  acre,  since 
overcrowding  per  acre  may  be  just  as  serious 
as  overcrowding  per  room.  Why  should  we 
not  town-plan  the  whole  of  England,  instead 
of  allowing  the  present  utterly  casual  method 
of  erecting  houses  ?  The  best  municipalities 
are  already  engaged  in  town-planning, 
though  I  believe  that  only  Birmingham  has 
got  a  scheme  through.  However,  there  are 
about  two  hundred  schemes  afloat,  though 
some  of  them  are  very  partial,  and  refer  to 
very  small  areas.  But  there  is  no  reason 
why,  within  a  certain  number  of  years,  every 
town  should  not  prepare  a  town-plan,  and 
limit  the  number  of  houses  to  the  acre  to  ten, 
twelve,  fourteen,  or  eighteen,  or  some  reason- 
able number,  to  give  air  and  space  around 
them.  That  is  essential  if  we  are  to  give 
our  workers  homes.  At  present,  if  I  may 
quote  a  phrase  that  hits  the  mark,  we  are  not 
even  housing,  but  only  warehousing  them. 
Obviously,  whether  such  a  step  is  possible 


14  SATISFACTORY  HOUSES  FOR  WORKING  CLASSES 

depends  on  two  things — on  the  cost  of  the 
house,  and  the  wage  of  the  man.  What  does 
the  cost  of  the  house  depend  on?  It  depends 
on  five  things  :  the  cost  of  the  land,  the  cost 
of  developing  it,  the  cost  of  constructing  the 
house,  the  interest  payable  on  the  capital 
invested  in  it,  and  the  rates  that  have  to  be 
paid  upon  it.  Those  are  the  five  directions 
in  which  we  must  seek  to  economise.  Let 
us  take  them  one  by  one. 

We  often  hear  it  said  that  the  price  of  land 
enters  to  such  a  very  slight  extent  into  the 
total  cost  of  a  house,  that  it  need  not  trouble 
us.  Except  in  the  centre  of  great  cities,  the 
price  of  a  site,  taking  a  fair  average,  is  only 
about  ^35,  or  say  30s.  a  year,  or  yd.  a  week, 
including  the  cost  of  the  roads  and  the  sewers. 
That  seems  to  be  nothing;  but  the  reason 
is  that,  on  account  of  the  cost  of  land,  we 
squeeze  30,  40,  and  50  houses  to  the  acre,  and 
so  the  site  purchased  is  excessively  small. 
Those  long  dismal  streets  are,  in  the  first 
instance,  the  result  of  the  cost  of  land.  In 
the  country,  where  it  is  cheap,  we  see  houses 


AT  RENTS  THEY  CAN  AFFORD  TO  PAY  1 5 

with  bits  of  garden.  But  the  nearer  we  draw 
to  the  town,  the  smaller  the  garden  grows, 
till  at  last  it  resigns  altogether  in  favour  of 
the  backyard.  As  land  becomes  dearer  the 
backyard  in  turn  grows  smaller  and  smaller, 
until  it  is  reduced  to  the  very  least  compass 
that  the  bye-laws  will  permit.  When  it 
becomes  dearer  still  it  is  necessary  to  erect 
tenement  dwellings — and  there  are  landings 
in  tenement  dwellings  in  London,  up  four  or 
five  storeys,  which  the  women  have  not  left 
for  four  years.  They  live  like  canaries  in  a 
cage. 

With  forty  houses  to  the  acre,  every  ;^ioo 
per  acre  costs  one  halfpenny  per  week,  but 
with  only  twelve  houses  per  acre,  it  costs 
three  halfpence  per  week.  That  means 
sevenpence  halfpenny  per  week  if  /^500  per 
acre  is  paid,  and  if  the  cost  of  the  roads  and 
the  sewers  is  ^^300 — a  fair  average — that  is 
another  fourpence  halfpenny.  Now  a  shil- 
ling a  week  for  the  developed  land  is  really 
an  important  consideration.  And  we  must 
remember  what  we  often  forget,  that  when 


1 6   SATISFACTORY  HOUSES  FOR  WORKING  CLASSES 

land  is  dear,  the  workman  does  not  neces- 
sarily pay  more — perhaps  he  cannot,  but  he 
gets  less  for  what  he  pays. 

If  we  are  to  develop  on  Garden  City  lines 
we  ought  to  have  land  at  not  more  than  /"300 
an  acre ;  and  we  must  ask  whether  it  is  avail- 
able for  building  workmen's  houses  at  a 
figure  within  that  limit.  Now,  the  price  of 
land  is  largely  determined  by  the  relation 
between  the  available  supply  and  the 
effective  demand.  Therefore,  the  way  to 
cheapen  land,  since  obviously  we  do  not 
want  to  lessen  the  demand,  is  to  increase  the 
available  supply.  There  are  three  ways  of 
doing  this  which  we  must  consider  with 
reference  to  working  men's  cottages.  We 
can  give  greater  powers  for  the  acquisition 
of  land  for  building  them.  At  present  it  is 
extremely  difficult  for  a  Municipal  Authority 
to  acquire  land  compulsorily.  Many  of  the 
Housing  Acts,  although  they  were  intended 
to  be  simple,  have  proved  in  practice  both 
cumbersome  and  costly ;  and  that  is  also  true 
of  the  powers  possessed  by  municipalities 


AT  RENTS  THEY  CAN  AFFORD  TO  PAY  17 

and  by  the  State  for  the  acquisition  of  land. 
We  can  simplify  those  powers,  and  thus  make 
it  possible  to  obtain  land  much  more  cheaply 
by  compulsion. 

Another  way  of  cheapening  land  is  advo- 
cated by  a  certain  group  of  people  who 
believe  in  the  taxation  of  land  values.  They 
point  out  that  at  present  land  is  rated  or 
taxed,  not  upon  its  capital  value,  but  upon 
its  letting  value  at  the  moment.  A  site,  for 
instance,  that  is  worth  a  thousand  pounds  an 
acre,  and  is  let  at  a  pound  an  acre  for  grazing, 
is  rated  on  a  basis  of  a  pound  an  acre — 
indeed,  in  such  a  case,  it  is  only  rated  on  the 
basis  of  I  OS.  an  acre,  because  of  the  Agricul- 
tural Rating  Act.  Clearly  such  a  system  of 
assessment  gives  its  owner  no  inducement  to 
put  it  to  its  best  use.  There  is  no  doubt  that 
any  alteration  in  our  rating  system  by  which 
land  was  assessed  for  rating  on  its  capital 
value  instead  of  on  the  basis  of  the  rent  it 
was  producing,  would  bring  into  the  market 
a  good  deal  of  land  which  at  present  is  not 
available. 


1 8   SATISFACTORY  HOUSES  FOR  WORKING  CLASSES 

But  there  is  another  way,  and  that  is  by 
improving  transit  faciHties.  All  round  our 
towns  there  is  any  amount  of  land,  at  perhaps 
;^50  an  acre.  A  very  little  way  out  of  even 
London,  land  may  be  bought  at  that  price. 
But  it  seems  clear  that  we  shall  never  make 
such  land  available  for  the  housing  of  the 
working  people,  until  we  have  a  much  more 
complete  system  of  transit.  It  must  be  very 
cheap  and  very  rapid  transit,  and  it  must  be 
especially  adapted  to  the  working  hours  of 
the  district.  The  most  complete  transit  sys- 
tem in  the  world  belongs  to  Belgium — a 
country  which  I  investigated  very  closely  for 
four  years.  In  Belgium,  one-third  of  the 
town-workers  live  in  the  country,  and  they 
come  into  the  town  by  cheap  workmen's 
trains.  In  Liege,  which  has  a  population  of 
160,000,  there  are  10,000  people  coming  in 
from  the  country  to  work.  If  we  could  get 
an  improved  system  of  transit,  we  could 
make  available  a  large  amount  of  cheap  land, 
and  it  would  then  be  quite  easy  to  spread 
houses  more  widely  over  the  ground.     It  is 


AT  RENTS  THEY  CAN  AFFORD  TO  PAY  1 9 

sometimes  argued  that  the  workmen  would 
not  take  advantage  of  such  facilities  if  they 
were  provided  — that  he  wants  to  live  near 
his  work.  I  doubt  it,  and  for  this  reason, 
that  whenever  he  has  a  chance  of  living 
away  from  his  work  he  takes  it.  Of  course, 
some  people,  such  as  Covent  Garden  porters, 
who  have  to  be  at  work  at  3  o'clock  in  the 
morning,  must  live  absolutely  on  the  spot. 
But  the  man  who  goes  to  work  at  ordinary 
times  is  quite  willing  to  travel  for  half  an  hour 
if  he  can  do  so  in  decent  comfort,  and  can 
secure  a  really  better  home  by  the  daily 
journey. 

There  is  a  little  village  outside  York,  2^ 
miles  from  the  middle  of  the  city,  with  no 
means  of  transit  except  walking  or  bicycling 
along  a  muddy  road,  yet  the  houses  could  be 
let  over  and  over  again.  The  history  of 
Garden  Suburbs,  all  over  the  country,  shows 
that  a  great  many  people  are  anxious  to  live 
in  them.  They  go  out  at  the  first  chance, 
and  their  friends  come  and  see  them,  and  are 
fired  by  their  example.     It  means  a  garden, 


20  SATISFACTORY  HOUSES  FOR  WORKING  CLASSES 

where  vegetables  can  be  grown,  and  the 
children  can  play,  and  it  means  a  far  more 
healthy,  a  better,  and  a  bigger  house,  at  the 
same  rent  that  they  paid  in  the  town.  The 
children  grow  up  and  marry,  and  want  to  live 
under  similar  conditions.  People  are  grow- 
ing weary  of  the  old  and  present  state  of 
things.  A  man  who  for  the  last  ten  years 
has  lived  in  the  worst  slums  of  London,  told 
me  the  other  day  that  the  deepening  discon- 
tent of  the  young  men  with  what  satisfied 
their  fathers,  is  extraordinary.  When  they 
marry  they  want  to  take  their  wives  to  better 
houses,  away  from  the  wretched  environments 
in  which  they  were  brought  up. 

If  we  could  get  transit  facilities  which  were 
ample,  cheap,  and  rapid,  at  the  right  hours  of 
the  day,  enormous  numbers  would  flock  to 
garden  suburbs  merely  on  grounds  of  health. 
But  there  are  other  advantages.  Take  the 
case  of  the  casual  worker.  Sometimes  the 
Belgian  docker,  when  he  goes  down  to  Ant- 
werp on  his  early  morning  train  between  five 
and  six,  merely  looks  round  and  says  :  "There 


AT  RENTS  THEY  CAN  AFFORD  TO  PAY  21 

is  nothing  doing  here  to-day,  Vm  off."  And 
he  goes  back  to  work  in  his  garden,  instead 
of  hanging  about  the  docks  and  fighting 
almost  like  a  wild  beast  with  other  men  for 
the  few  jobs  that  turn  up.  He  has  two 
occupations;  he  is  a  docker  and  he  is  a 
gardener.  Again,  many  a  bricklayer  whose 
work  is  in  Brussels  never  goes  near  the  town 
in  the  winter  time.  He  too,  works  at  his 
garden,  and  leaves  what  bit  of  bricklaying 
there  is  in  Brussels  to  his  mate  who  lives 
there.  Like  the  docker,  he  has  two  trades — 
an  enormous  advantage  when  work  is  scarce. 
Instead  of  walking  up  and  down  the  streets — 
and  there  is  nothing  on  God's  earth  that 
drags  a  man  down  faster  than  unemploy- 
ment— instead  of  going  pathetically  from 
factory  to  factory  asking  for  a  job,  he  tills 
his  bit  of  land.  He  may  have  to  live  for  a 
time  on  potatoes,  and  a  bit  of  bacon  and 
greenstuff,  but  he  does  not  starve,  and  he  is 
ten  times  better  off  than  his  mate  in  the  town. 
I  was  amazed,  in  Belgium,  to  see  how  the 
hardships  of  unemployment  were  mitigated 


22   SATISFACTORY  HOUSES  FOR  WORKING  CLASSES 

by  the  possession  of  this  garden,  which  acted 
as  a  buffer  between  the  family  and  destitution. 
Probably  there  are  at  least  half  a  million 
casual  workers  in  this  country.  They  never 
know  from  week  to  week,  sometimes  from 
day  to  day,  whether  they  will  have  anything 
to  do ;  and  as  a  man  grows  older,  his  chances 
of  getting  work  from  the  casual  labour  market 
decrease.  Now,  if  he  is  simply  seeking  work 
for  wages,  it  is  all  or  nothing;  he  is  employed 
or  he  is  not.  He  may  be  95  per  cent,  as  good 
as  the  man  that  gets  a  particular  job,  but  that 
95  per  cent,  is  absolutely  wasted  when  he 
gets  no  work  at  all.  But  if  he  has  a  little 
land,  he  can  use  his  95  per  cent,  or  90  per 
cent.,  or,  as  he  gets  older,  his  80  or  75  per 
cent,  of  strength  and  skill  on  that  land,  and 
it  will  be  so  much  to  the  good. 

Again,  dwelling  outside  the  town,  if  it  were 
made  possible  by  cheap  and  rapid  transit, 
would  widen  the  range  of  possible  occupa- 
tion. A  man  might  till  the  garden  of  another 
man  who  is  working  overtime  and  cannot 
attend  to  it  himself,  but  is  willing  to  pay  a 


AT  RENTS  THEY  CAN  AFFORD  TO  PAY  23 

substitute.  Or  he  may  work  for  a  neighbour- 
ing farmer.  It  would  make  the  position  of 
both  the  regular  man  and  the  casual  very 
much  better  than  it  is  at  the  present  time. 

Moreover,  it  is  remarkable  what  a  man  can 

get  out  of  a  little  plot  of  land.     For  three 

years    I    very    exhaustively    examined    the 

returns  of  24  plots  of  land.     I  had  every  bit 

of  produce  from  them  weighed  and  measured, 

and  valued.     I  got  working  people  to  tell 

me  exactly  what  they  paid  for  produce  bought 

in  the  market — often  last  thing  on  Saturday 

night  when   prices  were   at  their  lowest — a 

fruiterer  in  a  small  shop  gave  me  week  by 

week  his  prices  for  three  years  for  similar 

produce,  and  I  took  whichever  was  the  lower 

— the  fruiterer's,  or  the  market  price,  and  I 

valued  the  produce  of  the  24  plots,  and  I 

found  that  in  those  little  gardens,  cultivated 

by  men  working  some  in  a  factory,  others  on 

the  railway,  they  were  getting  on  the  average 

a  net  /^^i  worth  off  every  acre — ^"53  gross 

and  ^31  net.     If  a  man  had  only  an  eighth 

of  an  acre,  he  could  get  is.  4d.  a  week  from 

it. 


24   SATISFACTORY  HOUSES  FOR  WORKING  CLASSES 

Without  labouring  this  point,  I  urge,  then, 
that  land  must  be  cheapened,  by  rating,  by 
improved  methods  of  acquisition,  by  cheap 
transit,  or  by  all  three  methods  together. 

As  to  improved  development,  there  is  no 
doubt  that  roads  can  be  made  somewhat  more 
cheaply.  This  does  not  mean  that  we  should 
have  inferior  roads,  but  with  fewer  houses  to 
the  acre,  they  need  not  be  so  heavy,  the  actual 
paved  road  can  be  narrower,  and  the  spaces 
between  the  houses  can  be  mainly  utilised 
for  gardens.  A  cheaper  development  per 
house  is  possible  with  12  houses  to  the  acre 
than  with  40. 

As  to  the  house  itself,  there  have  been 
numbers  of  experiments  in  the  cost  of  build- 
ing. I  was  recently  in  a  house  which  cost 
^90.  It  had  a  big  kitchen  and  a  scullery,  a 
bathroom,  and  three  bedrooms.  It  was  very 
comfortable  and  very  dry,  but  it  was  not 
beautiful,  and  as  we  want  to  make  our  houses 
better  and  not  worse,  we  must  not  do  too 
much,  although  we  can  do  something,  in  the 
way  of  cheapening  construction. 


AT  RENTS  THEY  CAN  AFFORD  TO  PAY    2$ 

But  a  great  deal  can  be  done  in  the  direc- 
tion of  getting  cheaper  money,  if  we  can 
persuade  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer 
to  let  us  have  it.  If  money  can  be  borrowed 
from  the  Public  Works  Loan  Commissioners 
for  the  building  of  houses  at  i  per  cent,  less 
than  from  private  sources,  that  i  per  cent., 
on  a  house  costing  ;£^26o,  is  equal  to  a  saving 
of  a  shilling  a  week  in  the  rent.  There  is  a 
very  good  case  indeed  for  getting  more  of 
this  money,  and  the  loan  would  be  tolerably 
safe.  To-day,  if  a  municipality  builds,  it 
can  get  the  whole  amount  at  the  lowest  price 
— si  P^r  cent.  A  Public  Utility  Society, 
such  as  a  Tenant  Co-partnership  Society,  can 
get  two-thirds  of  the  value.  An  individual 
who  wants  to  buy  or  build  a  house  for  himself 
can  get  four-fifths  under  the  Small  Dwellings 
Acquisition  Act;  but  hardly  anyone  takes 
advantage  of  that  Act,  and  probably  most 
people  are  ignorant  of  it.  A  private  specula- 
tive builder  can  get  half,  but  if  he  has  little 
capital  of  his  own  he  needs  more  than  half, 

and  he  can  get  more  on  mortgage. 

c 


26  SATISFACTORY  HOUSES  FOR  WORKING  CLASSES 

Probably   if    a   larger   proportion   of   the 
capital  required  for  land  and  building — say 
85  per  cent,  instead  of  66  per  cent. — ^were 
lent  to  Public  Utility  Societies,  they  would 
spring  up  all  over  the  country.     A  Public 
Utility  Society  is  a  group  of  people  who  band 
themselves  together  to  build  houses,  under- 
taking to  receive  not  more  than  5  per  cent, 
interest  on  their  money.     They  build,  and 
then  let,  and  give  the  tenants  a  real  induce- 
ment to  look  after  the  property  well  in  the 
form  of  a  bonus  if  the  cost  of  repairs  is  low, 
and  if  the  houses  are  well  let.     These  Socie- 
ties  are   making   headway.      There   are   no 
complete  statistics,  but  whereas  in  1905  the 
capital  which  the    Societies   federated  with 
"  Co-partnership  Tenants  Ltd  "  had  invested 
in  houses  amounted  to  ;^92,ooo.     By  the  end 
of  191 2  it  had  risen  to  ;^i, 190,000.     It  is  a 
growing  movement,  and  it  will  grow  more 
rapidly  with  reasonable  encouragement.     Of 
course  if  the  Public  Works  Loan  Commis- 
sioners lent  a  larger  proportion  of  building 
capital   than   they   do   now,   they  would  be 


AT  RENTS  THEY  CAN  AFFORD  TO  PAY  2/ 

justified  in  charging  interest  at  a  somewhat 
higher  rate,  the  difference  between  the  new 
and  the  present  rate  going  to  a  national 
reserve  fund,  out  of  which  possible  losses 
might  be  paid.  In  addition  it  would  no  doubt 
be  necessary  for  the  Government  to  guarantee 
the  Commissioners  against  loss. 

We  must  touch  briefly  on  the  question  of 
rates.  They  have  risen  14^  per  cent,  in  the 
last  ten  years  in  County  Boroughs,  and  17  per 
cent,  in  Urban  Districts  in  England  and 
Wales,  and  now  they  average  about  8/-  in  the 
pound.  Probably  the  great  mass  of  the 
working  people  pay  in  rates  what  is  equivalent 
to  a  shilling  Income  Tax,  and  there  is  little 
doubt  that  that  is  an  undue  strain  on  their 
resources.  It  has  already  been  hinted  that 
the  National  Exchequer  is  going  to  bear 
certain  burdens  which  at  present  fall  upon 
local  rates.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the 
working  man,  there  seems  to  be  a  strong 
argument  for  partially  unrating  improve- 
ments and  placing  the  rate  instead  upon  the 
capital  value  of  the  land. 


28     SATISFACTORY  HOUSES  FOR  WORKING  CLASSES 

These  three  then  are  the  ways  in  which  we 
may  hope  to  cheapen  houses  :  or — and  this  is 
even  more  to  the  point — since  we  want  better 
houses  rather  than  cheaper  ones,  build  houses 
better  without  increasing  their  cost  above  the 
level  of  to-day.  We  can  cheapen  land  by 
means  of  transit,  rating  reform,  and  improved 
methods  of  acquisition.  We  can  cheapen 
money  by  obtaining  more  of  it  from  the 
Public  Works  Loan  Commissioners,  and  we 
can  lessen  rates  by  placing  a  proportion  of 
them  upon  the  site  instead  of  the  building. 
If  these  things  were  done,  the  better-class 
working  man  would  take  a  really  pleasant 
house  outside  the  town.  His  former  house 
would  be  left  vacant,  and  there  would  tend 
to  be  a  slight  slump  in  house  property,  which 
would  make  the  old-fashioned,  though  sani- 
tary house,  appear  less  desirable;  its  price 
would  drop,  and  then  it  could  be  let  to  the 
working  man  who  hitherto  could  not  afford 
a  sanitary  house  at  all. 

Undoubtedly,  however,  a  large  number  of 
bona  fide  working  men,  regular  workers,  or 


AT  RENTS  THEY  CAN  AFFORD  TO  PAY  29 

casual  workers,  would  still  be  unable  to  afford 
a  sanitary  and  satisfactory  house.  It  is  im- 
possible really  to  solve  the  housing  problem 
till  this  condition  of  things  has  been  altered, 
and  a  wide  extension  of  the  policy  of  the 
Trade  Boards  Act,  placing  an  increasing 
number  of  trades  under  it,  and  fixing  a 
minimum  wage  for  them,  is  essential  to  true 
housing  reform.  I  am  convinced  that  the 
principle  is  thoroughly  sound.  It  is  disas- 
trous to  the  nation  as  a  whole,  that  many  of 
its  workers  should  be  unable  to  pay  for 
proper  accommodation,  nor  can  it  ultimately 
benefit  the  employer.  We  must  not  only 
cheapen  housing  and  decasualise  labour,  but 
we  must  raise  wages,  and  then  we  can 
definitely  compel  the  municipalities  to  carry 
out  the  law  which  says  "  Every  house  in  this 
locality  shall  be  reasonably  fit  for  habitation." 
At  present  it  is  not  enforced,  for  the  simple 
reason  that  it  imposes  too  great  a  burden  upon 
the  local  authorities.  If  the  central  authority 
were  to  enforce  it,  the  local  authorities  would 
have  to  turn  thousands  of  people  into  the 


30   SATISFACTORY  HOUSES  FOR  WORKING  CLASSES 

Streets.  The  fact  is  that  until  we  have  dealt 
with  low-paid  and  casual  labour,  such  a  law 
is  largely  a  dead  letter.  But  that  once  dealt 
with,  nothing  is  left  but  the  residuum  of  the 
population — the  aged,  the  infirm,  the  vicious, 
and  so  forth — who  must  be  provided  for  by 
methods  of  public  relief. 

In  conclusion,  let  us  first  of  all  make  a 
survey  of  housing  conditions,  and  let  every 
locality  know  exactly  what  problem  it  has  to 
face.  Let  us,  as  rapidly  as  possible,  expand 
the  minimum  wage  policy,  which  we  have 
already  adopted  in  our  mines,  our  confec- 
tionery, our  tailoring,  our  shirt-making,  our 
chain-making,  and  other  industries.  Let  us 
press  forward  measures  for  the  decasualisa- 
tion  of  labour.  Let  us  make  town-planning 
compulsory,  with  a  restriction  on  the  number 
of  houses  per  acre,  provide  all  towns  with 
adequate  transit  facilities,  and  give  improved 
powers  for  the  acquisition  of  land.  Let  us 
lend  money  more  freely  to  Public  Utility 
Societies,  and  lessen  the  burden  of  rates  on 
small  houses.     Let  us  make  it  the  statutory 


AT  RENTS  THEY  CAN  AFFORD  TO  PAY  3 1 

duty  of  all  towns  to  see  that  their  inhabitants 
are  satisfactorily  housed,  and  finally  let  the 
grant  in  aid  of  rates,  from  the  National 
Exchequer,  be  made  conditional  upon  the 
proper  fulfilment  of  their  statutory  duties  by 
local  authorities. 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING 
PROBLEM. 


Some  Aspects  of  the  Housing  Problem. 

By  A.  C.  PiGou,  M.A. 

In  setting  out  to  address  you  on  the  topic 
from  which  my  lecture  takes  its  title,  I  owe  a 
preliminary  apology.  I  am  in  no  sense  a 
housing  expert,  and  have  no  special  know- 
ledge of  the  details  of  the  problem,  as  it 
presents  itself  either  in  large  towns  or  in  rural 
districts.  But  it  is,  I  think,  sometimes  useful 
for  a  person  who  is  not  a  specialist  to  review 
a  special  subject  in  the  light  of  things  in 
general ;  to  try  to  fit  it  in  as  a  part  of  a  larger 
whole ;  and  to  see  how  far  it  may  be  regarded, 
not  as  something  peculiar,  but  as  a  particular 
case  of  some  wider  problem.  It  is  from  this 
point  of  view,  and  with  this  endeavour,  that 
I  propose  to  approach  our  subject  this 
evening.  I  wish  to  consider  the  housing 
problem  as  one  aspect  of  the  general  problem 
of  poverty. 


36    SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM 

The  position  from  which  I  start  is  this. 
It  is  the  duty  of  a  civilized  State  to  lay 
down  certain  minimum  conditions  in  every 
department  of  life,  below  which  it  refuses  to 
allow  any  of  its  free  citizens  to  fall.  There 
must  be  a  minimum  standard  of  conditions 
in  factories,  a  minimum  standard  (varying  of 
course  with  the  strain  involved  in  different 
industries)  of  leisure,  a  minimum  standard  of 
dwelling  accommodation,  a  minimum  standard 
of  education,  of  medical  treatment  in  case  of 
illness,  and  of  wholesome  food  and  clothing. 
Each  one  of  these  standards,  so  far  as  prac- 
ticable, must  be  enforced  separately.  No 
such  plea  must  be  admitted  as  that,  if  a  man 
is  allowed  to  work  excessive  hours,  or  to  live 
in  a  cheap  and  ruinous  house,  he  will  be  able 
to  attain  independently  to  the  required 
minima  in  all  other  departments  of  life.  The 
standards  must  be  upheld  all  along  the  line, 
and  any  man  or  family  which  fails  to  attain 
independently  to  any  one  of  them  must  be 
regarded  as  a  proper  subject  for  State  action. 
The  exact  level  at  which  the  several  standards 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM    37 

should  be  set  is  naturally  different  in  different 
countries.  It  should  be  higher,  of  course,  in 
those  that  are  rich  than  in  those  that  are  poor. 
But  everywhere,  I  hold,  some  system  of  stan- 
dards should  be  set  up,  and  the  lapse  below 
any  one  of  them  should  be  made  the  occasion 
of  intervention  by  the  public  authorities.  For 
this  position  a  good  defence  can,  in  many 
instances,  be  made  upon  grounds  of  economy; 
for  expenditure  of  State  moneys,  so  arranged 
as  to  maintain  the  efficiency  of  the  poor,  may 
often  be  profitable  expenditure.  But,  even 
where  this  ground  fails,  the  policy  that  I  have 
sketched  is  amply  maintained  :  for  it  is  no 
more  than  the  acceptance  in  fact  of  the 
compelling  obligation  of  humanity. 

If  this  much  be  granted,  the  next  step  in 
our  enquiry  is  to  work  out  the  general  con- 
ception of  a  minimum  standard  in  its  special 
application  to  housing.  This  task  is  not  so 
simple  as  it  seems;  for  satisfactory  housing 
accommodation  is  a  complex  conception, 
involving  several  elements.  Of  these  two 
have  long  been  recognised.     The  first  has  to 


38     SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM 

do  with  the  structure  and  repair  of  individual 
houses.  Dilapidated  houses,  houses  that  are 
not  rain-proof,  houses  in  which  the  sanitary 
arrangements  are  inadequate,  houses  so  made 
that  there  is  no  proper  means  of  ventilation — 
the  building  of  these  must  be  forbidden  by 
law,  and,  if  they  have  been  built  already, 
they  must,  through  law,  be  either  renovated 
or  destroyed.  The  second  element  has  to 
do  with  the  overcrowding  of  rooms.  To 
prevent  this,  also,  whether  the  threatened 
overcrowding  be  due  to  too  large  a  family  or 
to  too  small  a  house,  or  to  the  taking  in  of 
lodgers,  direct  legislation  is  necessary.  In 
Mr.  Syke's  words,  what  is  required  "  can  only 
be  done  on  a  sufficient  scale  by  a  statutory 
definition  of  overcrowding  of  cubic  space  " ; 
and  he  adds,  giving  his  own  view  of  what 
this  definition  should  be,  "  nothing  short  of 
400  cubic  feet  per  head  for  adults  will  be 
satisfactory,  although  it  may  reluctantly  be 
reduced  to  half  the  amount  for  children 
under  ten  years."  ^    A  poHcy  on  these  general 

1.  Public  Heaith  and  Sousing,  pp.  151-2. 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM    39 

lines  is  pursued  by  the  London  County 
Council  in  respect  of  houses  managed  by 
them.  They  have  a  rule  that,  among  their 
tenants,  "  the  standard  of  two  persons  a  room 
must  not  be  exceeded  by  more  than  one  child 
under  three  years."  Annual  inspection 
secures  that  a  change  shall  be  made  when 
natural  increase  passes  beyond  these  limits; 
and  lodgers  can  only  be  taken  in  with  the 
Council's  leave.^ 

In  addition,  however,  to  these  two  obvious 
elements  in  satisfactory  housing  accommoda- 
tion, we  are  rapidly  coming  to  recognise  a 
third.  If  one  walks  through  an  ordinary 
town  to-day,  and  particularly  if  one  walks 
through  London,  it  is  obvious  at  once  that 
the  arrangement  and  external  form  of  the 
houses  leaves  much  to  be  desired.  One  sees, 
for  instance,  a  great  number  of  buildings 
frequently  huddled  together,  stretching  in 
long  rows  of  dismal  sameness,  with  narrow 
streets    and    no    green    spaces.      The    most 

!•  ^^"^  of  the   Working    aass,   L.C.C.    Report,    1913, 


40     SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM 

conspicuous  and  most  obvious  imperfections 
are  usually  to  be  found  in  those  congested 
districts  inhabited  by  the  poor,  that  exist  in 
the  central  parts  of  some  large  towns.  But 
even  in  the  suburbs  where  towns  are  expand- 
ing— in  some  of  the  out-lying  parts  of 
Cambridge,  for  example — adjacent  to  open 
country,  there  are  growing  up  with  a  terrible 
rapidity  hideous  unbroken  tracts  of  undistin- 
guishable,  featureless,  gardenless  habitations. 
After  a  while  one  becomes  so  permeated  and 
soaked  with  the  enervating  squalor  of  these 
drab  conditions,  that  one  tends  to  regard  it  as 
an  inevitable  evil  incident  of  town  life.  For 
people  living  in  Cambridge,  however — I  do 
not  know  how  you  are  situated  in  Man- 
chester— there  is  an  easy  way  in  which  that 
impression  can  be  cancelled.  All  we  have 
to  do  is  to  visit  the  Garden  City  at  Letch- 
worth,  or,  if  we  prefer  it,  the  Garden  Suburb 
of  Golder's  Green  in  Hampstead.  There 
the  houses  are  not  arranged  in  rows  but  are 
separate.  There  advantage  is  taken  of  un- 
dulations of  the  ground,  so  that,  when  one 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM      4I 

walks  down  a  street,  one  gets  a  view  between 
the  houses — a  view  generally  embracing 
greenery  and  trees.  There  too,  even  the 
smaller  houses  are  not  machine-made  to  a 
pattern,  but  have  individual  character,  possess 
gardens,  and  are  situated  near  large  open 
spaces  of  green.  Now  this  contrast  gives 
occasion  for  reflection.  It  reveals  to  us  the 
existence  of  an  essential  element  in  satis- 
factory housing  conditions  of  which,  until 
recently  in  England — though  the  case  has 
long  been  different  in  Germany — practically 
no  account  was  taken.  I  refer  to  the  satis- 
factory arrangement  of  the  various  houses  of 
which  a  town  or  village  is  composed.  Such 
satisfactory  arrangement,  we  are  coming  to 
see  more  and  more  clearly,  is  of  extreme 
importance.  It  is  not  merely  a  matter  of  the 
aesthetic  sense  of  a  few  superior  persons.  It 
is  a  matter  of  the  character  and  of  the  health 
of  the  people  as  a  whole — a  matter  in  a  way 
even  more  significant  than  the  internal 
arrangements  of  factories,  because  it  affects 
not  the  workers  only,  but  also  their  young 


42     SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM 

children.       Make     your     town     sufficiently 
hideous,    sufficiently    congested,    sufficiently 
void  of  open  space  and  grass  for  children's 
play,  and  you  go  far  to  write,  for  character 
and  for  life,  over  the  gate  of  it :  "All  hope 
abandon  ye  who  enter  here."     "  Le   pare," 
says  a  French  writer,  "  rend  a  nos  cites  indus- 
trielles  surpeuplees  un  service  spirituel  com- 
parable a  celui  que  la  cathedrale,  dans  la 
grandeur   et   la   beaute    de    son   architecture 
offrait  a  la  population  rurale  du  moyen  age. 
Le    pare    est    la    cathedrale    de    la    ville 
moderne."  ^      The  recognition  of  this  third 
element    in    satisfactory    housing    conditions 
leads  inevitably  to  the  granting  of  powers  to 
some  authority  to  limit  the  quantity  of  build- 
ing permitted  on  a  given  area,  and  to  control 
the  building  activities  of  individuals.     It  is 
as   idle    to   expect   a   well-planned   town   to 
result    from    the    independent    activities    of 
isolated  speculators,  as  it  would  be  to  expect 
a  satisfactory  picture  to  result  if  each  separate 
square  inch  were  painted  by  an  independent 

1.  Benoit-Levy,  La  Ville  et  son  Image,  p.  11. 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM    43 

artist.  No  *  invisible  hand '  can  be  relied 
on  to  produce  a  good  arrangement  of  the 
whole  from  a  combination  of  separate  treat- 
ments of  the  parts.  It  is  necessary  that  an 
authority  of  wider  reach  should  intervene 
and  should  tackle  the  collective  problem  of 
beauty,  of  air  and  of  light,  as  those  other 
collective  problems  of  gas  and  water  have 
been  already  tackled.  Hence  has  come  into 
being,  on  the  pattern  of  long  previous 
German  practice,  Mr.  Burns's  extremely 
important  town-planning  Act.  In  this  Act, 
for  the  first  time,  control  over  individual 
buildings,  from  the  standpoint,  not  of 
individual  structure,  but  of  the  structure  of 
the  town  as  a  whole,  is  definitely  conferred 
upon  those  town  councils  that  are  willing  to 
accept  the  powers  offered  to  them.  Part  II 
of  the  Act  begins  :  "A  town-planning  scheme 
may  be  made  in  accordance  with  the  provi- 
sions of  this  Part  of  the  Act  as  respects  any 
land  which  is  in  course  of  development,  or 
appears  likely  to  be  used  for  building  pur- 
poses, with  the  general  object  of   securing 


44     SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM 

proper  sanitary  conditions,  amenity  and 
convenience  in  connection  with  the  laying 
out  and  use  of  the  land,  and  of  any  neigh- 
bouring lands."  The  scheme  may  be  worked 
out,  as  is  the  custom  in  Germany,  many  years 
in  advance  of  actual  building,  thus  laying 
down  beforehand  the  lines  of  future  develop- 
ment. Furthermore,  it  may,  if  desired,  be 
extended  to  include  land  on  which  build- 
ings have  already  been  put  up,  and  may 
provide  "  for  the  demolition  or  alteration  of 
any  buildings  thereon,  so  far  as  may  be 
necessary  for  carrying  the  scheme  into 
effect."  Finally,  where  local  authorities  are 
remiss  in  preparing  a  plan  on  their  own 
initiative,  power  is  given  to  the  Local  Govern- 
ment Board  to  order  them  to  take  action. 
There  is  ground  for  hope,  however,  that,  so 
soon  as  people  become  thoroughly  familiar- 
ized with  the  town-planning  idea,  local 
patriotism  and  inter-local  emulation  will  make 
resort  to  external  pressure  unnecessary. 

What  has  been  said  so  far  is  intended  to 
illustrate  in  a  rough  way  the  nature  of  the 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM    45 

elements   involved    in   the    conception   of    a 
minimum  standard  of  housing  accommoda- 
tion.     These,    as    I    have    suggested,   refer 
respectively  to  the   structure  and  repair  of 
individual  houses,  the  condition  of  individual 
houses    as    regards    overcrowding,    and    the 
general  arrangement  of  the  whole  body  of 
houses  in  a  town  or  village.     So  much  being 
understood,  we  are  in  a  position  to  attack  our 
main  problem.     What  policy  or  policies  is  it 
desirable  to  pursue  in  order  that  the  minimum 
standard  of  housing  accommodation,  which 
we  adopt  in  theory,  may  also  be  attained  in 
practice?     This  problem  is,   I   think,  often 
deprived  of  some  of  the  illumination  due  to 
it  by  being  treated  as  a  thing  standing  apart 
in  splendid  isolation.     It  is  true,  no  doubt, 
that  the  minimum  standard  of  housing  accom- 
modation is  more  complex  than  some  other 
minimum   standards,   such   as   the   minimum 
standard     of     leisure.     That     circumstance, 
however,  does  not  carry  with  it  any  essential 
difference  in  character.     The  broad  outline 
of  the  practical  problem  is  the  same  in  regard 


46     SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM 

to  all  our  minimum  standards.  This  fact  is 
of  great  importance.  Bearing  it  in  mind,  I 
propose  to  devote  the  remainder  of  this 
lecture  to  a  discussion  of  the  three  principal 
methods,  which,  as  it  seems  to  me,  are  at 
present  available  for  helping  forward  the 
establishment  of  the  desired  minimum  stan- 
dard of  housing  accommodation. 

I  ask  your  attention  first  to  a  policy  that  is 
relevant  to  many  forms  of  minimum  standard, 
and  the  beneficial  influence  of  which  is  open 
to  no  dispute.  The  failure  of  poor  persons 
to  attain  the  level  we  deem  to  be  satisfactory 
in  the  matter  of  nourishment,  of  education 
and  of  insurance,  is  frequently  the  result,  not 
so  much  of  poverty  as  of  ignorance  and 
mismanagement.  Sympathy,  guidance  and 
instruction  by  Health  visitors  and  others  may 
often  enable  them,  without  any  additional 
expense,  greatly  to  improve  their  lot.  A  like 
statement  is  true  in  a  pre-eminent  degree  of 
certain  elements  of  satisfactory  housing. 
The  point  to  be  made  is  this.  A  great  part 
of    the    squalor    and    discomfort   of    certain 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM     47 

houses  of  the  poor  is  not  the  result  of  inability 
to  pay  a  reasonable  rent,  but  flows  rather 
from  the  low  character  and  the  want  of  train- 
ing of  those  that  inhabit  them.  Far  be  it 
from  me,  by  this  observation,  to  countenance 
in  any  way  that  smug  defence  of  certain 
landlords  neglectful  of  obvious  duties,  who 
say  :  "  It  is  useless  for  us  to  improve  our 
cottages;  if  we  do,  the  tenants  will  imme- 
diately convert  them  again  into  pig-styes." 
My  purpose  is  quite  other  than  that.  It  is  to 
show,  as  the  late  Miss  Octavia  Hill  so 
admirably  showed  by  practical  example,  that 
there  is  scope  for  immense  improvement  in 
the  houses  of  the  poor,  even  now  while  the 
brute  fact  of  their  poverty  continues.  Miss 
Hill,  with  the  help  of  John  Ruskin,  bought 
up  some  houses  in  a  most  degraded  area 
and  made  herself  the  landlady  of  them. 
Throughout  she  adopted  the  principle  that 
her  enterprise,  if  it  was  to  be  valuable  as  a 
social  object  lesson,  must  be  made  to  pay. 
She  fixed  commercial  rents  and  exacted  them 
with  unflinching  sternness.     The  enterprise 


48     SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM 

did  pay.  In  her  fight  with  the  wretched  con- 
ditions that  confronted  her,  she  deUberately 
refused  to  wield  the  powerful  but  double- 
edged  weapon  of  money  charity.  The 
weapon  that  she  did  wield  was  personal 
influence  and  disinterested  friendship.  Every 
week  she  visited  her  tenants  to  collect  the 
rent.  She  got  to  know  them  as  men  and 
women.  By  her  personal  appeal  she  raised 
their  ideals  of  cleanliness  and  order.  The 
stairways,  which  were  the  landlady's  portion — 
for  the  houses  were  let  not  as  wholes  but  as 
sets  of  rooms — she  had  kept  scrupulously 
clean,  and  gradually  she  saw  the  example 
spreading  to  the  adjoining  rooms.  She  let 
it  be  known  when  her  visits  would  take  place, 
and,  to  please  her,  the  tenants  began  to  make 
efforts  to  have  their  houses  decent  when  she 
came.  Sympathy  and  advice  she  gave 
always,  money  practically  never;  and,  as  a 
result,  the  whole  tone  of  the  lives  of  those 
men  and  women  was  changed.  They  be- 
came her  friends  and  lifted  their  ideal  of 
living   dimly  towards  hers.      Here   lies  the 


SOiME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM    49 

essence  of  the  matter.  A  landlady  stands  in 
a  relation  to  her  poor  tenants  in  which  there 
is  possible  immense  influence  upon  character, 
and,  through  character,  upon  the  condition  of 
the  home.  Unfortunately,  however,  it  often 
happens  that  the  landladies  of  poor  houses 
are  degraded  women  whose  influence  is  wholly 
bad.  The  moral  is  pointed  by  Miss  Hill  in 
her  Homes  of  the  London  Poor.  "  It 
appears  to  me,"  she  writes,  "to  be  proved  by 
practical  experience,  that,  when  we  can  induce 
the  rich  to  undertake  the  duties  of  landlord 
in  poor  neighbourhoods,  and  ensure  a  sufl&- 
cient  amount  of  the  wise,  personal  supervision 
of  educated  and  sympathetic  people  acting 
as  their  representatives,  we  achieve  results 
which  are  not  attainable  in  any  other  way  .  .  . 
I  would  call  upon  those  who  may  possess 
cottage  property  in  large  towns  to  consider 
the  immense  power  they  thus  hold  in  their 
hands,  and  the  large  influence  for  good  they 
may  exercise  by  the  wise  use  of  that  power. 
When  they  have  to  delegate  it  to  others,  let 
them  take  care  to  whom  they  commit  it,  and 


50    SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM 

let  them  beware  lest,  through  the  widely 
prevailing  system  of  sub-letting,  this  power 
ultimately  abides  with  those  who  have  neither 
the  will  nor  the  knowledge  to  use  it  benefi- 
cially   Where    are    the    owners,    or 

lords,  or  ladies,  of  most  courts  like  those 
in  which  I  stood  with  my  two  fellow-workers  ? 
Who  holds  dominion  there  ?  Who  heads  the 
tenants  there  ?  If  any  among  the  nobly  born 
or  better  educated  own  them,  do  they  bear 
the  mark  of  their  hands  ?  And  if  they  do  not 
own  them,  might  they  not  do  so  ?  "  ^ 

The  second  remedial  policy  is  a  negative 
one.  It  consists  in  prohibition  by  the  State 
of  the  sale  of  commodities  unfit  for  human 
consumption.  This  method,  as  is  well- 
known,  is  actively  employed  in  England  in 
the  case  of  articles  of  food.  Persons  offering 
bad  meat  or  bad  fruit  for  sale  are  liable  to 
prosecution,  and  the  condemned  goods  to 
confiscation.  In  the  case  of  housing  accom- 
modation an  analogous  policy  has  been 
adopted  in  England.     Part  II  of  the  Hous- 

1.  Loc,  cit,  pp.  51-2  and  39. 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM     $1 

ing  of  the  Working  Classes  Act,  as  slightly 
amended  by  the  Housing  Clauses  of  the 
Town  Planning  Act,  provides  that  an  order 
may  be  served  on  the  owner  of  any  house 
adjudged  unfit  for  habitation,  requiring  him 
either  to  render  it  reasonably  habitable  or  to 
close  it  down.  If  he  does  not  render  it 
reasonably  habitable,  or  take  stfeps  towards 
doing  so  within  three  months,  the  local 
authority  may  demolish  the  house  and  charge 
the  costs  to  the  landlord.  In  the  Town 
Planning  Act  it  is  also  provided  that,  in  the 
letting  of  houses  adapted  for  the  working 
classes,  there  shall  be  an  implied  contract  that 
the  house  is  at  the  start,  and  shall  be  through- 
out the  tenancy,  kept  by  the  landlord  "  in  all 
respects  reasonably  fit  for  human  habitation." 
This  obligation  is  enforcible  by  the  local 
authority,  and  that  body  is  empowered,  if 
necessary,  to  execute  such  repairs  as  may  be 
required  at  the  landlord's  expense.^  When 
we  have  to  do  with  a  town  which  has  always 
been,    or   has   somehow   become,  free    from 

1.  Local  Government  Board  Report  for  191S-S,  p.  xxviiL 


52     SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM 

houses  unfit  for  human  habitation,  the  adop- 
tion of  this  poHcy  for  the  future  need  not 
involve  any  great  difficulty.  For  not  many 
houses  could  become  uninhabitable  in  such  a 
way  that  renovation  was  impracticable  in  any 
one  year,  and  there  would,  therefore,  be  no 
danger  of  closing  orders  leading  to  a  shortage. 
All  that  is  needed  is  strict  official  supervision 
and  inspection,  such  as  is  provided  for  in  the 
seventeenth  section  of  the  Act  of  1909,  and 
in  the  actual  conduct  of  which  considerable 
progress  is  said,  in  the  latest  official  report, 
to  have  been  made  in  most  districts  of  this 
country.^  The  case  is,  however,  more  diffi- 
cult in  towns  where  the  initiation  of  reform 
is  confronted  by  the  existence  of  a  large 
number  of  houses  unfit  for  habitation.  Here 
the  medical  officers  know  that,  if  they  con- 
demn these  houses,  a  considerable  number  of 
persons  may  be  rendered  altogether  homeless. 
There  is  no  analogous  difficulty  as  regards 
the  condemnation  of  bad  food.     At  the  worst, 

1.  cf.  Memorandum  (No.  3)  on  the  Operation  of  the  Houging, 
Town  Planning,  etc..  Act  1909.    [Cd.  7206}    p.  2. 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM    53 

this  means  a  slight  contraction  in  the  con- 
sumption of  many  people.  But  the  con- 
demnation of  bad  houses  threatens  a  great 
contraction  in  the  consumption  of  a  few 
people;  and  this,  of  course,  involves  far 
greater  proportionate  suffering.  In  conse- 
quence, the  scope  of  this  negative  remedy  of 
condemnation  is  often  found,  as  regards 
housing  accommodation,  to  be  very  narrowly 
limited.  Its  adoption  on  a  large  scale,  as  a 
means  of  abolishing  the  accumulated  slums 
of  the  past,  is  rarely  likely  to  be  practicable 
except  in  association  with  some  positive  policy 
for  the  provision  of  new  houses. 

What  has  been  said  will  have  made  it  plain 
that  both  the  two  policies  we  have  been  con- 
sidering are,  in  their  place,  valuable  means  of 
improvement.  Advice  and  help  to  poor 
persons  in  the  art  of  keeping  their  houses  in 
a  good  state — like  instruction  in  the  art  of 
cooking — and  the  condemnation  of  uninhabit- 
able houses — like  the  condemnation  of  dis- 
eased meat — may  accomplish  no  small  amount 
of    good.     By    themselves,    however,    it    is 


54    SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM 

obvious  that  they  cannot  establish  everywhere 
the  desired  housing  minimum.  The  root  diffi- 
culty remains.  When  all  that  can  be  done  has 
been  done,  there  must  still  be  many  persons 
who,  if  abandoned  to  their  own  unaided 
efforts,  cannot  afford  to  purchase  that  quan- 
tity and  quality  of  housing  accommodation 
which  the  general  judgment  of  the  country 
declares  to  be  a  necessary  minimum;  they  are 
unable,  in  fact,  to  offer  enough  rent  to  induce 
builders  to  provide  them  with  respectable 
dwellings.  In  some  cases,  no  doubt,  this 
inability  may  not  be  absolute,  but  may  be  due 
to  the  fact  that  they  attach  an  unduly  low 
importance  to  housing  accommodation  as 
contrasted  with  other  objects  of  expenditure; 
and,  w^hen  this  is  the  source  of  the  evil,  it 
may  be  feasible,  by  rigid  inspection  and  so 
forth,  to  compel  them  to  spend  more  on 
housing,  just  as  it  may  be  feasible  to  compel 
them  to  spend  more  on  insurance,  without 
forcing  down  their  consumption  of  other 
things  below  the  accepted  minimum  stan- 
dards.   In  very  many  cases,  however,  inability 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM     55 

to  afford  the  price  of  decent  housing  is  not 
susceptible  of  this  simple  remedy.     It  arises, 
at  least  in  part,  from  the  fact  that  the  ill- 
housed  workman's  income,  however  well  it 
may    be    expended,    is    insufficient    to    give 
command  over  the  various  sorts  of  minima 
which  we  deem  it  proper  he  should  attain. 
This   is  the   dominant   difficulty  with  which 
housing  reformers  are  faced.     It  is  not — let 
me  emphasise  the  point — specially  or  pecu- 
liarly   a    housing   difficulty.      Just   as   many 
persons  cannot  afford,  without  falling  short 
of  what  is  required  elsewhere,  to  purchase  a 
reasonable  minimum  of  housing  accommoda- 
tion, so  also  they  cannot  afford  to  purchase  a 
reasonable  minimum  of  food  or  of  education 
or  of  medical  attendance.     The  failure  with 
which  we  are  confronted  is  the  general  fact 
of   poverty,   whereof   inadequate   housing   is 
merely  a  manifestation.     Furthermore,   that 
general  fact,  it  is  perhaps  well  at  the  present 
time   to   observe,   would   still   remain,    even 
though  Parliament  were  to  set  up  and  enforce 
a    national    minimum    wage.     I     shall    not 


56    SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM 

attempt  here  to  answer  the  difficult  question 
whether  the  establishment  of  such  a  wage  is 
or  is  not,  on  the  whole,  desirable.  But,  how- 
ever that  question  be  answered,  it  is  certain 
that  its  establishment  would  not  secure  the 
universal  prevalence  of  adequate  earnings. 
For  earnings  depend,  not  on  the  wage  level 
alone,  but  on  the  wage  level  coupled  with  the 
amount  of  employment ;  and  the  setting  up  by 
law  of  a  wage-rate  superior  to  that  which 
many  persons  can  command  in  a  free  market 
could  not  fail  to  act  injuriously  upon  the 
employment  they  obtain.  Whether  or  not, 
therefore,  a  legal  minimum  wage  is  estab- 
lished, the  fundamental  difficulty,  that  the 
earnings  of  many  persons  are  inadequate  to 
the  totality  of  their  reasonable  needs,  still 
calls  for  a  solution.  We  are  thus  led  forward 
inevitably  to  the  consideration  of  a  third 
policy,  additional  to  the  two  already  dis- 
cussed, which  is  relevant  to  the  minimum 
standard  of  housing  accommodation — the 
policy,  namely,  of  State  aid  towards  the 
housing  of  the  poor. 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM    57 

It  is  plain  that,  if  the  public  authorities 
choose  to  give  what  is,  in  effect,  a  bounty  on 
the  production  of  any  commodity  largely 
consumed  by  poor  persons,  and  so  to  enable 
that  commodity  to  be  bought  by  them  below 
cost  price,  a  number  of  people,  who  would 
otherwise  have  failed  to  reach  one  or  more  of 
the  minimum  standards  that  have  been  set 
up,  may  now  succeed  in  reaching  them.  This 
statement  is  true  equally,  whether  the  com- 
modity sold  to  the  poor  at  less  than  cost  is 
house  accommodation,  or  clothes,  or  food,  or 
anything  else  that  they  are  accustomed  to 
buy  :  and  it  is  also,  of  course,  true  equally, 
whether  the  bounty  takes  the  open  form  of  a 
subsidy  to  production  by  private  enterprise, 
or  the  concealed  form  of  production  at  a  loss 
by  the  public  authorities  themselves.  In  the 
current  practice  of  the  United  Kingdom  such 
subsidies  are  not  given  as  regards  articles  of 
food  and  clothing,  but  they  are  given  as 
regards  education,  insurance  against  sickness, 
and,  in  selected  trades,  insurance  against 
unemployment.     In  Ireland,  under  the  Irish 


58    SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM 

Labourers'  Act,  they  are  also  given,  in  sub- 
stantial measure,  as  regards  housing.     Is  the 
policy  of  giving  them  in  that  regard  on  the 
whole  desirable?     This  is  our  final  problem. 
Before    this    question    can    be    discussed 
satisfactorily,    it    is    necessary    to    clear    the 
ground  of  an  important  and  widely  prevalent 
misconception.     Popular  writers  often  imply 
that  the   experience   of   the  old   Poor   Law 
has  condemned  once  and  for  all  every  form 
of  public  assistance  to  poor  persons,  except 
such  as  is  given  under  disciplinary  and  deter- 
rent conditions.    The  provision  from  national 
funds,  whether  in  whole  or  in  part,  of  educa- 
tion,   of    insurance  premiums,  or  of  housing 
accommodation,  is  denounced  on  the  ground 
that  it  constitutes  relief  in  aid  of  wages  and 
is,  therefore,  a  reversion  to  the  discredited 
policy  of  Speenhamland.     This  is  a  mistaken 
view.     It  ignores  the  fact  that  the  root  evil 
of  the  old  Poor  Law  lay  in  the  circumstance 
that  the  subsidies  which  it  granted  depended 
directly  upon,  and  varied  inversely  with,  the 
wages  paid  to  the  recipient,  thus  creating  a 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM    59 

direct  temptation,  on  the  side  of  the  masters, 
towards  cutting  wage-rates,  and  on  the  side  of 
the  men  towards  idleness.  Subsidies,  the 
amount  of  which,  as  paid  to  separate  indi- 
viduals, varies  not  inversely  with  their  earn- 
ings, but  directly  with  the  quantity  of  their 
purchases  of  some  commodity,  are  wholly 
different  from  the  subsidies  of  the  old  Poor 
Law.  Condemnation  of  the  administration 
of  that  law  has,  therefore,  no  relevance  to  our 
present  enquiry.  The  policy  of  attacking 
the  housing  problem  with  the  weapon  of  State 
aid  does  not  involve  a  reversion  to  rates  in 
aid  of  wages  of  the  old  evil  kind,  and  cannot 
be  dismissed  on  the  authority  of  experience. 
It  requires,  on  the  contrary,  to  be  examined 
carefully  on  its  merits. 

One  further  preliminary  observation,  con- 
cerning which  no  dispute  will  arise,  may 
conveniently  be  introduced  here.  //  it  is 
decided  to  confer  a  bounty  on  the  provision 
of  housing  accommodation  for  the  poor — to 
provide  houses  for  them,  as  it  is  sometimes 
said,   at   less   than   an   economic   rent — that 


6o    SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM 

bounty   should    not   be    so   arranged   as   to 
differentiate  in  favour  of  an  anti-social  distri- 
bution  of   population.     There  is  reason   to 
believe  that,  in  most  large  towns,  the  play 
of    economic    forces    tends    to    concentrate 
population    more    closely    than    is    socially 
desirable  in  the  central  districts.     Bounties, 
therefore,  if  given  at  all,  should  be  given 
in  such  a  way  as  to  counteract,  or,  at  all 
events  not  in  such  a  way  as  to  emphasize, 
that  tendency.     This  seems  sufficiently  plain. 
And  yet  for  a  long  time,  the  law  in  some  cases 
enforced,    and  the  London  County  Council 
in  yet  other  cases  pursued,  a  line  of  policy,  in 
which  the  considerations  I  have  just  explained 
were  wholly  ignored.^     Perceiving  that  the 
high  cost  of  land  in  the  centre  of  London 
made  the  rents  at  which  workmen's  dwellings 
could    be    let    there    abnormally    high,    the 
County  Council  built  houses  there,  wrote  off 
the  difference  between  the  commercial  value 
and  the  value   for  working-class   dwellings 
of  the  sites,  and  offered  the  houses  for  hire  on 

1.  Cf.   Hcnising  of    the    Working   Classes,    L.C.C.  Report, 
1913  pp  115. 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM    6l 

terms  which  involved,  in  effect,  the  payment 
of  a  heavy  subsidy  from  the  ratepayers  to 
their    tenants.     No    corresponding    subsidy 
was  given  in  respect  of  houses  situated  in  the 
outlying  districts.     The  result  was  the  same 
as  if  food  had  been  offered  on  special  terms 
to  those  poor  persons  who  agreed  to  live  in  the 
central  parts  of  London.     Working  people 
were,  in  effect,  paid  money    upon  condition 
that  they  would  occupy  sites  which,  as  their 
market  value  showed,  it  was  to  the  national 
interest  to  turn  to  quite  other  uses.    The  anti- 
social congestion  of  the  centre  was  thus  made 
worse  than  it  would  naturally  have  been.     It 
needs  little  reflection  to  perceive  that  a  bounty 
differentiating  in  favour  of  such  congestion  is 
the  worst  possible  form  of  bounty.     If  differ- 
entiation is  introduced  at  all,  it  should  favour 
dispersion,  whether  directly  by  way  of  grants 
towards  the  building  of  cottages  in  the  outer 
ring,  or  indirectly  by  the  subsidizing  of  cheap 
workmen's  trains  and  trams.     This  point  of 
view  was  embodied  in  the  Cheap  Trains  Act 
of   1884,  which  compelled  the  provision  of 


62     SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM 

workmen's  trains  to  and  from  the  London 
suburbs,  and,  conditionally  upon  the  required 
trains  being  provided,  remitted  the  passenger 
duty  on  all  fares  of  less  than  id.  per  mile. 
A  similar  standpoint  is  adopted  by  the  London 
County  Council  in  the  management  of  its 
tramway  system.  In  19 ii  there  were  1,684 
workmen's  cars  running  daily,  with  a  mileage 
of  17,928  miles  per  day.^ 

After  all,  however,  this  matter  of  differen- 
tiation is  a  subordinate  one.  The  funda- 
mental question  as  to  the  wisdom  or  otherwise 
of  properly  arra^iged  subsidies  upon  the 
housing  accommodation  offered  to  the  poor 
still  remains  to  be  faced.  Ought  housing 
accommodation  to  be  treated  as  education 
and  insurance  are  now  treated,  or  ought  it  to 
be  left,  like  food  and  clothing,  without  the 
support  of  any  subsidy?  I  myself  approach 
this  question  with  a  major  premise  that  some 
would  dispute.  I  believe  it  to  be  right  that 
the  well-to-do  should  be  summoned  by  the 

1.  Rousing  of  the  Working  Classes,  L.C.C.  Report,  1913, 
p.  108. 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM    63 

State  to  help  their  poorer  neighbours  when- 
ever that  summons  can  be  enforced  without 
evoking  gravely  injurious  reactions  upon  the 
production  of  weath  and,  therewith,  ultimately 
upon  the  fortunes  of  the  poor  themselves. 
In  view  of  the  fact  that  good  conditions 
of  life  undoubtably  increase  the  industrial 
efficiency  of  those  who  enjoy  them,  State 
assistance — granted  always  that  it  is  so 
arranged  as  to  avoid  directly  tempting 
workers  into  idleness — might,  I  think,  be 
given  in  considerable  measure  before  any 
such  injurious  reactions  were  set  up.  This 
proposition  seems  to  me  to  hold  good  of  State 
subsidies  upon  education,  insurance,  housing, 
food  and  clothing  equally.  No  decisive 
objection  in  principle  can  be  established 
against  any  of  these  things.  It  is  evident, 
however,  that  the  practical  problem  of 
arranging  a  system  of  subsidies  in  such  a 
way  that  it  shall  not  contain  obviously  objec- 
tionable features  is  much  more  difficult  as 
regards  some  of  them  than  it  is  as  regards 
others.      Articles  of  food  and  clothing  are 


64    SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM 

produced  in  a  great  number  of  different 
places  and  sold  through  a  great  number  of 
different  shops.  This  circumstance — to  say 
nothing  of  the  difficulty  of  distinguishing 
between  articles  consumed  in  the  main  by  the 
poor  and  by  the  rich, — seems  to  raise  an  almost 
insuperable  obstacle  to  the  grant  of  State  aid 
in  respect  of  poor  people's  purchases  of  such 
things.  Education,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
provided  through  a  much  smaller  number  of 
separate  centres  and  is,  furthermore,  a  com- 
modity that  can  be  furnished  much  more 
satisfactorily  than  food  and  clothing  by  pub- 
lic, as  distinguished  from  private,  enterprise. 
The  administrative  problem  of  organizing  a 
bounty  in  respect  of  it  is,  therefore,  consider- 
ably less  complex.  The  case  of  insurance, 
though  somewhat  harder  than  that  of  educa- 
tion, is  still  much  easier  than  that  of  food  and 
clothing.  The  housing  of  the  poor  stands, 
as  it  seems  to  me,  in  an  intermediate  position. 
There  are  strong  grounds  for  holding  that  the 
task  of  building  houses  is  not  generally  one 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM    6$ 

for  which  pubHc  authorities  are  well  suited.^ 
Private  enterprise  ought  not,  therefore,  to  be 
discouraged  by  the  grant  of  public  aid  towards 
the  cost  of  houses  erected  by  town  councils 
unaccompanied  by  the  grant  of  similar  aid 
towards  the  cost  of  those  erected  by  private 
enterprise.  Plainly,  however,  to  arrange  for 
the  payment  of  subsidies  to  the  large  number 
of  separate  private  persons  who  are  con- 
cerned in  the  building  of  small  houses  is  an 
exceedingly  large  task  and  one  in  the  conduct 
of  which  abuses  could  hardly  fail  to  arise. 
These  considerations  leave  no  room  for  doubt 
that  the  policy  of  subsidies  in  aid  of  the 
housing  of  the  poor  is  open  to  serious  prac- 
tical objections.  For  my  own  part,  however, 
I  am  not  convinced  that  these  objections  are 
incapable  of  being  overcome.     On  the  whole, 

1.  On  the  relative  advantages  of  public  versus  private 
building  Mr.  Nettleford  has  some  very  weighty  remarks : — 
"  The  housing  question  is  very  largely  a  personal  question,  and 
cannot  be  successfully  dealt  with  in  the  wholesale  fashion 
which  is  the  only  way  possible  when  Local  Authorities  insist 
upon  themselves  building  the  actual  houses  required,  instead 
of  being  content,  and  wisely  content,  to  encourage  others  to 
build  houses  on  proper  lines,  keeping  themselves  free  to  super- 
vise and  control  what  is  done,  wnich  is  after  all  their  first  and 
most  important  function."    {Practical  Housing,  p,  116). 


66    SOME  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM 

— though  on  such  a  matter  it  is  impossible 
to  speak  with  assurance — I  am  inclined  to 
rank  housing  with  education  and  insurance, 
in  regard  to  which  subsidies  are  already 
provided,  rather  than  with  food  and  clothing, 
in  regard  to  which  such  subsidies  are  not,  and 
so  far  as  present  indications  go,  cannot  in 
general — I  do  not  refer  to  the  special  case  of 
school  children — be  provided.  Whether  or 
not  this  be  the  correct  view,  I  am  convinced 
that  carefully  drawn  schemes  of  State  assist- 
ance towards  the  housing  of  the  poor  ought 
not  to  be  condemned  out  of  hand  upon 
grounds  of  principle.  They  deserve,  if  not 
support,  at  least  sympathetic  consideration. 


Index. 

Agricultural  Rating  Act,   1 7. 
Antwerp,  casual  worker  in,  20. 
Arrangement  of  houses,  41. 

Belgium,  transit  facilities  in,  18. 

unemployment  in,  21. 

Benoit  Levy,  42. 

Birmingham  and  town-planning,  13, 
Bounties,  57,  64. 

on  provision  of  housing  accommodation,  59. 

60,  61. 
Brussels,  21. 

Builder,  attitude  towards  housing,  11. 
Building,  cost  of,  24. 

Cambridge,  housing  conditions  in,  40. 

Casual  labour,  30. 

Casual  worker  in  Belgium,  20. 

Character  and  health  affected  by  housing  conditions,  41. 

Cheap  Trains  Act  of  1884,  61. 

Cleanliness  and  order  improved  by  personal  appeal  to 

tenants,  48. 
Control  over  individual  buildings,  43, 
"  Co-partnership  Tenants  Ltd."  26. 

Disease,  spread  of,  5. 

Garden  City,  development  of  the,  16. 
plots  and  the  casual  worker,  23. 

suburbs,  history  of,  19. 

Germany,  difference  in  arrangement  of  houses  in,  41. 

conditions  of  town-planning  in,  44. 

Golder's  Green,  Garden  Suburb  of,  40. 


68  INDEX 

Hill,  Miss  Octavia,  47,  49. 
House,  cost  of,  14. 

life  of,  9,  10. 

Houses,  arrangement  and  external  form  of,  39. 

cost  of  land  for,  15,  17. 

demand  for,  9. 

improved  by  example  of  landlords,  47. 

individual  character  of,  41. 

limitation  of  number  per  acre,  12,  13,  30. 

rise  in  cost  of  construction  of,  9. 

shortage  in,  7,  9. 

structure  and  repair  of,  38. 

unfit  for  habitation,  51. 

Housing  accommodation,  minimum  of,  55. 

Acts  in  general,  16. 

inferior  indifference  of  inhabitants  to,  54. 

minimum,  54. 

of  the  Working  Classes  Act,  50-51,  62. 

practical,  65. 

present  conditions  of,  3. 

unsatisfactory  condition  of,  due  to  inhabitants, 

47- 
Housing  of  the  working  classes,  L.C.C.  Report,  60. 

Income,  amount  of,  absorbed  in  rent,  6,  7. 
Irish  Labourers  Act,  57,  58. 

Labour,  decasualisation  of,  30. 
Land,  acquisition  of,  30. 

by  municipal  authorities,  16. 

by  State,  17. 

development  of,  24. 

high  cost  of,  60. 

how  to  increase  the  supply  oi,  16. 

in  the  country,  14. 

price  of,  14,  16. 

values,  lo. 

values,  taxation  of,  17. 


INDEX  69 

Landlord,  duties  of,  49. 

Landowner,  the,  11. 

Letchworth,  Garden  City  at,  40. 

Liege,  transit  facilities  in,  18. 

Limitation  of  quantity  of  building  on  a  given  area,  42. 

Local  Government  Board  Report  for  igi2-l3,  51. 

London  County  Council,  39,  60. 

houses  managed  by,  39. 

tramway  system,  62. 


investigation  of  housing  in,  7. 
land  near,  18. 


Middlesbrough,  investigation  of  housing  in,  7 

Minimum  Standard  applied  to  housing,  37,  45,  55. 

Minimum  Standards  in  every  department  of  life,  36,  57. 

Minimum  Wage,  29,  30,  55,  56. 

Money,  cheaper,  25. 

how  to  cheapen,  28. 

shortage  of,  8. 

Municipalities,  29. 

National  Exchequer,  31. 

Overcrowding,  4,  38. 

Poor  Laws,  58,  59. 

Population,  desirability  of  dispersing  more  widely,  60. 

Poverty,  55. 

Public  Utility  Societies,  26,  30. 

" Society,  a,"  what  it  is,  26. 

Public  Works  Loan  Commissions,  25,  26,  28. 

Rates,  grants  in  aid  of,  31. 
how  to  lessen,  28. 

rise  in,  27. 

Rating  system,  alteration  in,  17. 
Repairs,  at  landlord's  expense,  51. 


70  INDEX 

Roads,  cheaper  construction  of,  24. 
Ruskin,  John,  47. 

Sanitary  arrangements,  insistence  on,  by  local  authorities, 

authorities,  9. 

Slums,  congestion  in,  3. 

means  of  abolishing,  53. 

Small  Dwellings  Acquisition  Act,  25. 
Speenhamland,  policy  of,  58. 

State  action,  36. 

aid  toward  the  housing  of  the  poor,  56. 

assistance,  59,  63,  64,  66. 

prohibition  by  the,  50. 

Subsidies  59,  62. 

already  provided  for  education  and  insurance,  66. 

diflficulty  in  arranging  payment  of,  63,  65. 

Tenant  Co-partnership  Society,  25. 
Town  Planning  Act,  1909,  43,  51,  52. 

local  authorities  and,  44. 

Local  Government  Board  and,  44. 

local  patriotism  and,  44- 

municipalities  and,  13. 

Trade  Boards  Act,  29. 
Transit,  cheaper,  effects  of,  22. 

facilities,  improving  of,  18,  23. 

provision  of,  30. 

Unemployment,  effects  of,  21. 

Working-man,  poverty  of,  62. 
Wages,  14. 

York,  19. 


The  List  of  Titles 
in  the  Garland  Series 


1.  Walter  Besant.  East  London.  London,  190L 

2.  W.H.  Beveridge.  Unemployment.  A  Problem  of  Industry. 

London,  1912. 

3.  Charles  Booth.  The  Aged  Poor  in  England  and  Wales. 
London,  1894. 

4.  Clementina  Black,  Ed.  Married  Women's  Work.  Being 
the  Report  of  an  Enquiry  Undertaken  by  the  Women's 
Industrial  Council.  London,  1915. 

5.  Helen  Bosanquet.  The  Strength  of  the  People.  A  Study 
in  Social  Economics.  London,  1903  (2nd  ed.). 

6.  A.L.  Bowley  and  A.R.  Burnett-Hurst.  Livelihood  and 
Poverty.  A  Study  in  the  Economic  Conditions  of 
Working- Class  Households  in  Northampton, 
Warrington,  Stanley,  and  Reading.  London,  1915. 

7.  Reginald  A.  Bray.  Boy  Labour  and  Apprenticeship. 
London,  1911. 

8.  C.V.  Butler.  Domestic  Service.  London,  1916. 


9.  Edward  Cadbury,  M.  Cecile  Matheson  and  George 
Shann.  Women's  Work  and  Wages.  London,  1906. 

10.  Arnold  Freeman.  Boy  Life  and  Labour.  The 
Manufacture  of  Inefficiency.  London,  1914. 

11.  Edward  G.  Howarth  and  Mona  Wilson.  West  Ham.  A 
Study  in  Social  and  Industrial  Problems.  London,  1907. 

12.  B.L.  Hutchins.  Women  in  Modern  Industry. 

London,  1915. 

13.  M.  Loane.  From  Their  Point  of  View.  London,  1908. 

14.  J.  Ramsay  Macdonald.  Women  in  the  Printing  Trades.  A 
Sociological  Study.  London,  1904. 

15.  C.F.G.  Masterman.  From  the  Abyss.  Of  Its  Inhabitants 
by  One  of  Them.  London,  1902. 

16.  L.C.  Chiozza  Money.  Riches  and  Poverty.  London, 
1906. 

17.  Richard  Mudie-Smith,  Ed.  Handbook  of  the  "Daily 
News"  Sweated  Industries'  Exhibition.  London,  1906. 

18.  Edward  Abbott  Parry.  The  Law  and  the  Poor.  London, 
1914. 

19.  Alexander  Paterson.  Across  the  Bridges.  Or  Life  by  the 
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20.  M.S.  Pember- Reeves.  Round  About  a  Pound  a  Week. 
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21.  B.  Seebohm  Rowntree.  Poverty.  A  Study  of  Town  Life. 

London,  1910  (2nd  ed.). 


22.  B.  Seebohm  Rowntree  and  Bruno  Lasker. 
Unemployment.  A  Social  Study.  London,  1911. 

23.  B.  Seebohm  Rowntree  and  A.C.  Pigou.  Lectures  on 
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24.  C.E.B.  Russell.  Social  Problems  of  the  North.  London 
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25.  Henry  Solly.  Working  Men's  Social  Clubs  and 
Educational  Institutes.  London,  1904. 

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London,  1904. 

27.  Alfred  Williams.  Life  in  a  Railway  Factory.  London, 
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28.  [Women's  Co-operative  Guild].  Maternity.  Letters  from 
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Herbert  Samuel,  M.P.  London,  1915. 

29.  Women's  Co-operative  Guild.  Working  Women  and 
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bound  with  Anna  Martin.  The  Married  Working 
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